When cooking or baking, it is often necessary to add a specific amount of a particular ingredient to ensure the correct flavor and consistency of the final result. This is especially true in baking, where the various ingredients, such as flour, sugar, salt, and leavening agents must be added in the correct proportions to achieve the rise and texture desired in the finished product.
When measuring granular foodstuffs, such as flour and sugar, the measuring cup is dredged in the container holding the bulk foodstuff and filled. This results in the filled measuring cup having a mounded surface. To maintain consistency in measurement it is advisable to use a flat surface such as the back of a knife to scrape across the measuring cup to remove this extra mounded material. Failure to do so would yield a measure of the dry foodstuff that is greater than the stated amount of the measuring cup, potentially resulting in a failed baking attempt.
Most cooks follow the practice of scraping across the top of the measuring cup with a straight flat surface, as described above. This, however, requires the cook to seek out and use a separate utensil for this purpose, leading to increase in effort and the number of soiled utensils requiring cleanup at the end of the baking process.